How to Find Yourself: Why Looking Inward Is Not the Answer

In this probing treatise, Rosner (Known by God), principal of Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia, suggests readers look to the Bible for guidance on shaping identity. Using scriptural analysis and personal stories about Rosner’s own identity crisis, the author criticizes “expressive individualism,” which conflates identity with who one feels like they are “on the inside,” and claims that it overemphasizes such identity markers as occupation, gender, and ethnicity. Instead, “we need to look not only around, and backward and forward, but also upward,” Rosner writes, contending that while “we know ourselves in being known by others,” perceptions can be flawed, and so one should turn to God, who knows each person as a father does his child. The author examines biblical passages to outline a Christian approach to identity formation that follows Jesus’s example of “costly, selfless, others-centered love.” The author’s exploration of the causes of contemporary identity crises is perceptive (“It is ironic that social media appears to enable self-definition while in reality magnifying the influence of others on how you think about yourself”), but the overabundance of superfluous personal anecdotes may not sustain reader interest. This thoughtful volume offers a refreshing and novel Christian understanding of the self and how it forms. (May)